The future of Libre Computing: Crowd Funding Campaign Starts Now

OK I think I completely misunderstood. I think I get it now: say I have u-boot on an SD card. I have my distro of choice installed to a USB flash drive. Aside from some configuration I need to do before this works, my card will boot from the flash drive by default when I start up.

> Aside from some configuration I need to do before this works,
> my card will boot from the flash drive by default when I start up.

> Is this right?

yyup. by the time the linux kernel is loaded into memory (by u-boot, off the sd-card or NAND), the linux kernel will have all the drivers it needs to recognise *any* boot media that happens to be plugged in.

it's the allwinner hard-coded boot rom (hard-coded into the *processor*) that's incapable of booting from anything other than NAND or SD/MMC, so you have to bootstrap your way up in several stages to the point where all the hardware is recognised.

this is actually the "normal" way it's done, even in the intel world... it's just that the majority of the bootstrapping is done by what you know as the "BIOS". this is a leeetle bit less... less... what's the word... hand-holding, shall we say :)

i'm using a 32gbyte sandisk extreme plus, it's the 85mbyte/sec series, and it works pretty well: i'm getting sustained 20mbytes/sec out of it.

encryption doesn't have anything to do with the storage media (one way or the other), it's all "just data"

installing u-boot onto NAND: that's how i do it, using allwinner's (GPL'd) bootloader and the sunxi-3.4 kernel. it's a little strange, but it's... functional. actually installing is very easy: the bootloader recognises FAT partitions, so as long as you drop u-boot into that, it's happy.

long story: the NAND driver in the allwinner sunxi kernel was developed entirely themselves, but not as an MTD driver. so a lot of work has gone into re-creating the NAND driver in the sunxi community, which is *still* ongoing. consequently, for "stable" use you have to use this rather oddly-designed driver and a 3.4.104 kernel.

best overall to use micro-sd cards and help out with development of NAND drivers.

hmm you should be able to get to http://rhombus-tech.net, if you go to http://rhombus-tech.net/sitemap/ you should be able to get an overview from there. http://rhombus-tech.net/crowdsupply/ is where i'm maintaining an "alternative" set of information - mostly notes for myself. if you decide you want to pledge for any of the hardware you can email name at domain (make sure to cc me), they can explain the bank transfer process, you'll have to send them a GPG public key so they can encrypt the details to send you. also banks charge them $15 so you'll need to add that, but other than that you should be good.

I am very worried about the crowd funding. 25% of the days have gone by but only 17% is funded. Is there really only so few people interested in this? I think it might be because of a lack of publicity. If it were not for these forums (and the newsletter from ThinkPenguin) I would have completely missed this so far.

I expect that a RYF certification and a post by the FSF would increase these numbers. Let's hope for that. In addition everybody please remember to discuss this topic with friends and family!

Do everything that you can to spread the word, but this trend you're seeing is not unusual. The times most people tend to donate are at the start of the campaign, when it was just announced and there's excitement, and toward the end of the campaign, if it gathered a substantial portion of its goal, because it's more certain that the campaign is going to succeed. There's normally a decline in the middle of the campaign.

The most important thing is for most of the goal to be reached by the last week, so that people see it as almost there rather than seeing it as a failure during that critical time frame.

yeah that was a nice surprise to see it get off the ground like that. also, people who've heard of it but have not contributed yet will be thinking, "hmmm, payday at the end of the mooonth, gotta plaaan aheeeead" and so on.

as i'm here on a 90 day visa waiver in the USA, we had to go ahead on an accelerated schedule, as well as ensure that i and my family can be in taiwan during the right time-period (not summer!). we therefore didn't have time to coordinate everything (press releases) - i've only just learned a few days ago that debconf2016 had taken place, i've been so focussed on the actual details of the project! it turns out that john sullivan has been in africa (most likely at debconf), so very very busy, and so has not been accessible to discuss or approve FSF official communications.

we're all keenly aware that crowd funding campaigns are of limited duration, so if there's anyone that you feel you could reach out to, who is an FSF supporter, or whom you feel would benefit from this hardware, please do contact them yourself, that's really the main thing - let them know so that they can plan.

Emailing the FSF will probably not have the result you want. I wouldn't worry too much about the FSF or RYF. They'll release something before the Crowd Funding campaign is over. Ideally it would have happened already, but Josh Gay, and everybody at the FSF is kept very busy. Josh has to talk to John and figure out exactly what is acceptable to put into promotional material. As soon as John is back I'm sure Josh and John will be on top of it. We've sent a few too many emails as it is and taken up a lot of Josh's time already. Sending a bunch of emails will probably not speed things up. If anything it'll probably slow it down.

I'm copying this message to libreplanet-discuss and to Alexandre Oliva
since I think it's important for them to know this message too.

I'm very worried about the crowdfunding too.

Don't worry, I *am* contributing by spreading the word about it, even
though I hardly have the salary/wage to support it financially.

My message is focused on the *possibility* to do things right from the
beginning (by explaining that it's *being evaluated for RYF
certification), and because if it's at least proven to work with
free/libre system distributions, it allows the community to use it even
in environments/situations that are hostile to free/libre software
movement.

I also have tried to counter a misinformation that is spread here in
Brazil: That "Raspberry Pi works with free/libre system distributions",
or that "Raspberry Pi is good for the free/libre software movement". And
I also tried to convince people to buy Libre Tea Computer instead of
Raspberry Pi.

However, I was recently financially and accessibly limited to how many
people I would be able to inform.

From July 13th to 16th, an event/conference happened here in Brazil,
called Fórum Internacional de Software Livre (FISL, "international forum
of free/libre software") in Porto Alegre. Lot's of people go there, and
there are lot's of "pro-open-source-only" talks there, and even some
advertising "Raspberry Pi as free/libre software friendly".

As I said: I was financially and accessibly limited to go to that event.
Financially because it's hard to find free/libre software-friendly jobs
here in the State of Santa Catarina, where I live, specially those not
requiring programming skills (I'm not a programmer). I accept work
overseas, but I haven't found such opportunity so far. I was accessibly
limited because there were no caravans/groups near where I live to take
me to the event. Big Mother agreed to pay the caravan/group travel
expenses if I could find one nearby, but I couldn't.

Perhaps we could start working on spreading representative persons of
the free/libre software movement to attend these events, not just
Stallman, Sullivan, and Gay. Oliva is one of such people but, as far as
I know, he wasn't aware of Libre Tea Computer (we probably need to ask
him this: does he participate on libreplanet-discuss mailing list?). The
way I see it, we have lost a great opportunity to stand up for
free/libre software.

adfeno, i'd like to share some insight with you. when you "worry" people can sense it. they can hear it in your words, even if you don't actually *say* "i am worried". what then happens is... your WORRIES become fulfilled - they become true - because those thoughts "fail, fail, fail, fail" are what you tell everyone, so GUESS WHAT HAPPENS?

:)

so can i suggest, sit down, relax, close your eyes, and imagine yourself holding one of these laptops in your hands, and celebrating with a huge smile. imagine you are booting it up for the first time, you experiment with the CTP and are amazed that it works just like a trackpad. relax and open your eyes, still smiling.

*BELIEVE*.

that's an exercise called visualisation: all the people who teach "how to succeed" courses teach this technique (in a bit more detail than the one sentence above).

when i see "we have lost..." i wonder what date it is. it is the 17th july. it is not 17th august. it is not the 26th August (the end day of the campaign), why are you saying "we have lost??" you understand what i'm saying?

*BE POSITIVE* and you will find, to your surprise, that positive things happen.

Indeed. And as I said before: it's normal for there to be some slowdown in contributions during this period. We just need to push it up to the point where it's almost there, and then there will be a surge of contributions at the end to push it over the edge.

This is a technique I agree with whole heartedly. Those religious people who are "Really religious" meaning not false ones... would agree with you. By the way, I donated 15$ more to your cause. I probably won't go any further but I will try and give people reason to support you if I can.

I tend to be pessimist, most times I do it as defensive pessimism, but
other times I overdo it.

This "common agreement" between religion and science is new to me
actually.

There are some researchers that defend some form of defensive pessimism
as a way to counter some problems, but judging from the answers of the
makers of the project, I see they already exercised preventive actions
based on their defensive pessimism.

For the science behind this idea, this is all I've found, and you better take it with a grain of salt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effectA major limitation of this experiment was its inability to be replicated well. "Most studies using product measures found no expectancy advantage for the experimental group, but most studies using process measures did show teachers to be treating the experimental group more favorably or appropriately than they were treating the control group...because teachers did not adopt the expectations that the experimenters were attempting to induce, and/or because the teachers were aware of the nature of the experiment.

But I've read somewhere a very rational explanation: if you say to yourself that you can't do something, you might not even try.
Or you would try, but half-heartedly, inconsistently, or self-sabotaging in some way, since you think it's meant to fail.
After all, we can be fooled into believing something is true or not. And we can definitely fool ourselves.
BUT (non-religious) faith in oneself without action is definitely BS in most cases (at best, it makes you feel better if ill maybe).
You must do the work consistently. The whole point is to get yourself moving, doing the work to be done, specially when you don't feel like doing it.
So motivate yourself by all means, but more importantly: work your ass of, consistently.

In the S02E02 of Mr.Robot ([POTENTIAL SPOILER AHEAD]), there's an unflattering example of this.

If someone has solid scientific sources, the skeptic I am is interested.

In sports psychology, as far as I can tell, you want to have positive expectations to get motivated. But you still have to do the work. Which you can do ;)

Your evidence and conclusion would appear to be solid, but they aren't entirely relevant to the point.

Although a 'positive mindset' doesn't increase your chance of success with actually succeeding in a work project (like designing and manufacturing the card), it makes a huge difference in marketing. In order to get somebody else excited about a project, thus convincing them to invest, you have to believe yourself it will work out. Otherwise, your words sound artificial and empty.

Thanks for your input.
You mean communicating emotions then?
Then I agree,
but I would say some people can sell garbage (fas food, sodas for example), So to me the selling part is more like acting. You have to believe you can achieve something though, either the income from the crappy product if cynical enough, or making a positive change, or both, etc.

But I was referring more to the attitude one should have when facing hardships/challenges, whether in designing, manufacturing, selling, whatever.
It's just that I'm very skeptical towards some attitudes more than others.
I'm all for faith (in oneself) as long as the results are tested, measurable and reproducible.

> In sports psychology, as far as I can tell, you want to have positive expectations to get motivated. But you still have to do the work.

fascinatingly - and this is a major off-topic distraction i know - a trick taught by physiotherapists that train olympic athletes is to IMAGINE that they are doing the whatever-sport-it-is-that-they-do, whilst relaxing at night in bed. it turns out that merely IMAGINING doing the action - as long as you *have* actually done it - can trigger tiny muscular twitches that cause your muscles to gain around 70% of the benefits (increased muscle mass, maintaining "tone") as if you were *actually doing the real exercise*.

so, as a tennis player, i tried this one day, lying in bed, half-asleep - luckily there was nobody in the bed next to me - because i tried "imagining" a huge forehand stroke, my arm jumped up involuntarily and smacked the wall :)

but going back to the original study, imagine that you are the "gatekeeper" on the brownian-motion "thought experiment", the one where you have to open the gate at the time that the "atoms" are coming towards it. what if you didn't *believe* that the pressure would be reduced by opening the gate, such that when an atom came towards the gate, you *didn't take the opportunity and didn't bother opening the gate*?

this is about the simplest most blindingly-obvious way to illustrate that our belief affects the outcome, even when presented with "random chance aka opportunity".

in treating every conversation on reddit - some times i am tired and don't do it - but in treating every conversation on reddit as an "opportunity" i have actually influenced individuals who would otherwise simply not have known the difference, and would not have pledged on the campaign. the fact that i answered their questions (promptly) has made all the difference. it's a frickin lot of work but i have time, so why not.

You mean visualization techniques? Yes I've heard about them. I mean it's definitely used by athletes around the world, but for example, the idea in basketball that a shooter having a good streak should keep having the ball is false. Statistics revealed that a player in such state doesn't put more baskets in. Yet even the best coaches keep believing that stuff. But it seems visualization has measurable effects, so I'll check it out, thanks.

I'm not sure I understand the example about atoms. You mean beliefs affect outcome because they can make us "not try", thus reducing the chances of success to zero? If that's what you mean, I totally agree. I vaguely (sorry) remember an experiment about flies in a box with glass covering the box. After several attempts, the flies stopped trying, even when the glass wasn't there anymore.

For now, here's what I'm sure of:
- Telling myself that I can do something (not necessarily right now), will motivate me to try, and try again. Trying implies some possibility of success. Not trying removes all chances of success.
- The keyword here is not belief only, but trying, as in doing the work consistently. It's not easy.
- Meditation, visualization, both have an effect on the mind, on emotions at the very least. It helps feeling better, more focused, which improves the work to be done.
- I like the opportunity mindset you describe. Definitely, changing how I feel about the work to be done matters. The only thing is it's better to do the work regardless of my mood than spending too much time trying to get myself in the mood (I've seen people do that).

The temperature makes it hard to think straight, hopefully I make sense.

the clear / transluscent one i've not printed out yet (but i do have some translucent PLA and have printed parts with it) - i'm not sure if i'll use PETG or PLA. clear PLA tends to come out partly opaque, whilst PETG stands more of a chance of being clearer.

assembly of the laptop is very much like assembling a 3D printer. i've done 3 full casework sets now, and it's a matter of following things logically step-by-step and taking care. however unlike a 3D printer you'll only need some screwdrivers, maybe a craft knife, and you certainly won't need a soldering iron.

i will be doing the assembled laptops myself, and i will be using those to create detailed and comprehensive instructions, including video segments. if you are familiar with the build instructions for chris palmer's "mendel90", that is the standard of documentation that i will be creating. i'll also be available online to help people out.

ok that photo was the second prototype, i'd experimented with ABS for the sides and for the screen-hinge after leaving the first prototype in a bay window, in the sun where i had photographed it... you know what's coming next don't you.... it had melted because PLA has a glass point of 60C :)

so that's why the left and right sides in that photo are white: it's "plain" ABS which has a glass point of 110C. however i didn't like the quality of ABS, so i will not be using it. instead i will be trying PETG.

the materials that i've used for the laptop so far are Faberdashery's PLA. Robot Silver, Transluscent Black, Village Green - they don't do that beautiful dark purple any more, sadly. their web site is http://www.faberdashery.co.uk, you can review their materials and if you use facebook they have people posting stuff there. faberdashery's PLA is known amongst the "power users" of the 3D printing world to be EXTREMELY good. people order it for delivery world-wide because they've never been able to find anything equivalent.

i did try some of 123dprint.nl's apollo series "Budget" PLA.... it was so ludicrously low quality as to be borderline mis-selling and deceptive marketing. fortunately after explaining to them that even when the filament was left in a 3D printer without doing anything, just the bearing and gear pressing against it, after two days of pressure the filament would just FALL OFF it was such bad quality, they gave me a full refund without even having to pay postage costs. they recommended some of their PETG, i bought that instead, and have been really happy with it.

now, i haven't had a chance to 3D print up some of the laptop parts with their PETG yet: it has a much higher glass point and is structurally stronger than PLA, so i am looking forward to trying it out.

so. when i am in S.E. Asia i will be endeavouring to source materials that are as good quality as Faberdashery's. if i can't find any i'll just have their filament imported (!). there aren't that many laptop pledges so this should be absolutely fine.

> I am thinking of backing the card, the desktop case and the cable set.

great. that way you'll be able to have 3 native full-speed USB2 ports (2 on the desktop, a 3rd via the OTG-Host cable)

> When I back multiple projects will the shipping charges be clubbed to the maximum amount among them or charged separately?

for USA there's no shipping charge as we've taken that into account. for outside of the USA, Crowd Supply, from their long experience, has an estimated average based on weight and destinations world-wide. so we'll be charged for total weight of the items, rather than by volume.

> Did you ever consider Olimex boards as alternative? They claim that as OSHW.

NO.

you may not be aware that tsvetan was one of the first few people to join arm-netbooks, because it was where you could get information about the Allwinner A10. i worked to get the source code out of Allwinner, but there were sections that were still GPL-violating at the time. over the next few years people such as Henrik (linux-sunxi u-boot), and the people who now make up the linux-sunxi community developers, worked just as hard to reverse-engineer the remainder of the code.

i had already decided that i was not going to sell GPL-violating products, and i told Allwinner as much - holding off release of the EOMA68-A10 Computer Card (which later became the EOMA68-A20). now, i was surprised to learn that Olimex had created their A10 board. and guess what? it contained a GPL-violating bootloader and a GPL-violating linux kernel. this was fixed *later* but it was already too late: Olimex had - and still have - lost their right to distribute products with either u-boot or the linux kernel source code.

now, when i pointed this out on the gpl-violations mailing list, he attempted to divert the attention from himself with ridicule, claiming that "how could I, who had never succeeded to release a product, tell him that he was in the wrong?"

when he brought out the A64 laptop, he got a lot of flak for attempting to sell a product that, once again, contained binary-only proprietary components, many of them also GPL-violating at the time. when he was questioned on his blog about this he wrote, "To be honest I really don't understand all the fuss about this binary nonsense, and I'm getting really fed up with it". i wish i had taken a screenshot because two days later he'd taken his response off the blog.

against this background, can you perhaps appreciate why i would not wish to use or endorse Olimex products? tsvetan is interested in making money, and he'll sacrifice ethical considerations to get it. i will not, because i know that the cost of sacrificing ethics is far greater than *any* amount of money that can be had for doing so.

thanks mzs114. yehh... we know... the FSF was not very happy to learn that the creators of the "Librem laptop" had not done their due diligence before using the word "Librem". i had a lot of explaining to do there, about why i was happy to use Crowd Supply when they'd backed that project, and it boiled down to two main things: one, they trusted the creators of the Librem (and didn't know that it implies certain freedoms and that due diligence has to have been done in order to be able to use that word) - Crowd Supply certainly know now because we explained it to them! but two, they're very very much "on the ball", are much smaller and more selective, and just generally have this much better "vibe" about them which has an eco-angle. they've backed some really really beautiful projects, including a carbon-fibre surf board that uses balsa wood (very light-weight), an awesome USB-stick computer, an educational robotics kit, and many more. so.. yeah. it just felt right.

basically we're already 54% of the way to one of the critical thresholds for the Computer Cards: the MOQ is 250. assuming an equal balance we actually should reach that critical threshold around the $65k mark.

if however someone ordered another 114 computer cards and 0 laptops or micro-desktops we would reach that MOQ of 250 *but* we would need a leeetle bit more cash so that i can get to Taiwan.

we'll get there one way or another and no i will not be giving up.

it is however really important that everyone get onto internet forums, news groups, mailing lists - talk to friends, talk on IRC, even if you have friends who use windows for all their life that's a great opportunity to ask them if they are fed up of losing files, afraid of ransomware stealing their data, if they've ever had to shell out for a new computer just because of a virus and so on, and explain to them about this laptop, how it can be upgraded to faster processor and memory for only $65 (less once we get to mass-volume) and that if they get one you'll help them out if they have any questions. oh and it weighs only 1.1kg :)

it's down to everyone to work together so that the minimum threshold's met.

You know I saw one of your earlier posts, and I have to say, the attitude of positivity you have is very good.

I should know better than to think the opposite... Not to drag this conversation into a crazy way, but science and religion both have one thing in common, they both agree on one thing: If you think you will lose, you are much more likely to lose.

heh I am ashamed now of thinking this would fail, thank you for your earlier post.

A little bit of info by the way, I am christian. If you wonder why I am on your side,

yehh chris has tried different laptops, the ones that can be used regularly by businesses day-to-day are the 15in ones. it's just... it took a *year* to design that casework, and that was full-time. it's something we can put on the todo list, but we'll certainly need community help with it - or another sponsor. however yes the approach to take will be completely different for the next campaign, because the Computer Cards will already be out there - that makes a huge difference: future campaigns can be kept simpler and "one product per campaign". this one's.... complex :)

Sorry for all the questions -- and thanks for taking the time to answer ... just a few more from me

For the laptop, does the LCD connect to the Computer Card via a LVDS? Will your business sell different LCD screens (perhaps higher res, perhaps just replacement screens) in the future that we can buy and swap in to the current laptop body (perhaps with a case mod, perhaps not)?

Is Parabola appropriate if I want a stable, reliable OS to use for work? I have heard over the years that Parabola is for advanced computers and that people who use Parabola must regularly fix bugs because Parabola gets all the newest updates. I am fairly novice and won't have time to learn how to fix bugs ... reliability is really important to me. Would Debian be safer in this regard? How can I use Debian while sticking with Trisquel's principles?

I have been using Parabola on my main work laptop for two years now. Not a single time did I have any problems that would cripple the system. Occasionally (for me, it happened 1-2 times in two years) some package updates to a newer version while another one still would like the old version. However typically this fixes itself after upgrading again a couple of days later. Of course, if you want to do something advanced (e.g. use two pairs of headsets with cloned sound) then you have to figure out how to do it, but at least you have the option to do it.

However if I know I have a very tight deadline, and I cannot afford any delays, I would avoid running "sudo pacman -Syu" (the do-it-all command to update and upgrade) until I'm less stressed.

Parabola encourages you to learn how things work though. If you want to use Parabola, I highly recommend you to learn to install it following the guide at

In the x86-world I would say that if you want something to "just work" then install Trisquel. If you want regular updates, newest packages, and are willing to learn a bit of new things, then go for Parabola. However in the ARM-world there's really only one choice for a freedom-respecting OS (Parabola).

You can indeed use the Guix software on ARM, however there's only instructions on how to install the GuixSD operating system on x86. I can't wait for someone to port it to ARM! Perhaps I'll take a look into it once the EOMA-68 is sitting on my desk!

Also, it would be a nice learning experience to see if Trisquel could be ported to it. It will be very convenient to swap "hard drives" by just plugging a memory card out and another back in instead of having to open a laptop with a screwdriver each time.

ha, well.... welcome to modular computers: with EOMA68 you can have *two* affordable computers, one for "experiment with updates", the other "stable"... and swap between the two, within seconds. cool huh? :)

It's reassuring that you have not had any big problems with Parabola. I will back up regularly so that if something goes wrong, I can use a different computer until I figure out how to get Parabola working properly. Thanks for your reply Eemeli.